Brain and Behavior
clock | October 26, 2007There are 85 days until the Science Blogging Conference. The wiki is looking good, the Program is shaping up nicely, and there is more and more blog and media coverage already. There are already 106 registered participants and if you do not register soon, it may be too late once you decide to do so (we'll cap at about 230). Between now and the conference, I am highlighting some of the people who will be there, for you to meet in person if you register in time.
Shelley Batts is a Neuroscience PhD student studying hearing (more precisely hair cell regeneration in the cochlea) at the…
cortex | October 24, 2007An intriguing new hypothesis that seeks to explain all of the diverse psychological symptoms associated with autism. Here's the abstract:
While significant advances have been made in identifying the neuronal structures and cells affected, a unifying theory that could explain the manifold autistic symptoms has still not emerged. Based on recent synaptic, cellular, molecular, microcircuit, and behavioral results obtained with the valproic acid (VPA) rat model of autism, we propose here a unifying hypothesis where the core pathology of the autistic brain is hyper-reactivity and hyper-plasticity…
omnibrain | October 24, 2007
Pneumatic Anatomica by ~freeny on deviantART
I really like how the hemispheres of the brain are forced to be especially separated by the physical structure of the balloon dog. I wonder if there are any behavioral implications?
-via boingboing- and here's the original.
The artist says this:
Artist's Comments
After months of observations, dissections and a 25 minute intro to clown school, I have finally successfully mapped the inter workings of the domestic balloon dog.
NEWS! This piece will be featured in the next issue of "Hi Fructose" magazine.
scientificactivist | October 22, 2007A few years ago, while I simultaneously enjoyed a mild Texas evening and a few beers with a second-year medical student, my idealistic and outspoken friend argued that as a society we spend way too much money on scientific research. That money should instead, she contended, be spent wholly and directly on fighting global poverty and disease.
I agreed that it should go without saying that improving the world's lot ought to be our number one priority: an ideal rarely realized due to the pernicious distractions of war, greed, nationalism, ideology, and a variety of other factors. Esoterically…
dmunger | October 22, 2007
Encephalon 34 is ready to go at Distributed Neuron
N Skills Every Scientist Should Have
Help Chad come up with a list of the most important skills for scientists
Some tips for putting together a Behavioral Science grant proposal
The relationship between money and happiness
Key conclusions: Money doesn't make you happy, but happy people end up making more money
If you don't like laughing, don't watch this video
A brilliantly executed brain-themed spoof of educational programming. "Learn" how to conduct your own neuroscience experiments!
razib | October 16, 2007Maternal Immune Activation Alters Fetal Brain Development through Interleukin-6:
Schizophrenia and autism are thought to result from the interaction between a susceptibility genotype and environmental risk factors. The offspring of women who experience infection while pregnant have an increased risk for these disorders. Maternal immune activation (MIA) in pregnant rodents produces offspring with abnormalities in behavior, histology, and gene expression that are reminiscent of schizophrenia and autism, making MIA a useful model of the disorders. However, the mechanism by which MIA causes long-…
clock | October 15, 2007Monday - the day for checking in PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine for the newest published articles. And there is some good stuff:
Characterization of Sleep in Zebrafish and Insomnia in Hypocretin Receptor Mutants
Sleep disorders are common and poorly understood. Further, how and why the brain generates sleep is the object of intense speculations. In this study, we demonstrate that a bony fish used for genetic studies sleeps and that a molecule, hypocretin, involved in causing narcolepsy, is conserved. In humans, narcolepsy is a sleep disorder associated with sleepiness, abnormal dreaming, and…
oracknows | October 15, 2007Today is a very sad day in the autism blogosphere. The news I am going to discuss saddens me and should sadden anyone concerned with autism, particularly in combating the antivaccination hysteria and the outright quackery that flows from it promulgated by so many these days, from J. B. Handley to Jenny McCarthy, who couldn't be more different other than their being twits.
One of the longest-running and best autism blogs, Left Brain, Right Brain, is closing.
It would be one thing if the trials and tribulations of everyday life had led Kev to make this decision, as they do for so many other…
neurophilosophy | October 11, 2007
Ants and aphids have a symbiotic (or mutually beneficial) relationship. The aphids provide the ants with a food-source - the sugar-rich honeydew they excrete when eating plants - and, in return, the ants protect the aphids from ladybirds and other insects that prey on them.
To ensure a constant supply of honeydew, some ant species cultivate large numbers of aphids, and prevent them from straying too far from the colony by biting and damaging, or even completely removing, their wings. The ants also secrete a chemical from their mandibles which inhibits wing development in juvenile aphids.…
retrospectacle | October 10, 2007[I figured that some of you may be new to Retrospectacle due to the blog scholarship contest. I am also writing a manuscript and about to leave to give a talk in Antwerp. So, I thought I might repost a few of my more thought-provoking neuroscience posts today. I hope you enjoy them. -Shelley]
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), currently the most common childhood-onset behavioral disorder, is nothing if not controversial. Nearly every aspect of ADHD from diagnosis to prevalence to medication, and even its mere existence, is disputed by at least one 'concerned' group. And…
denialism | October 10, 2007The latest crankery from Adams is the evil male-chauvinist conspiracy to perpetuate breast cancer for fun and profit being led by none other than those dastardly villains of the American Cancer Society. With his stunning report and links to the thinkbeforeyoupink campaign, he rails against the ribbons that are a "symbol of male-dominated control over women", and exposes the insidious lies of those who spend their lives looking for cures for this deadly disease.
In this report, you'll learn how the cancer industry -- which is dominated by powerful men -- uses the same tactics today to…
laelaps | October 9, 2007Category: Anthropology
As I mentioned just prior to my move to Sb, I spent this past Saturday at NYU at the "Evolutionary Anthropology at the Interface" conference, which was primarily a celebration of the work of Cliff Jolly. I'm still a bit over my head when it comes to knowing the full "Who's Who" of evolutionary anthropology, but I do know that Cliff Jolly is most well known for his "seed-eaters" hypothesis of human origins, in which extant baboons (Papio sp.) are proposed to be better primates to study when considering primate origins and a seed-eating diet is put forward as one of the…
clock | October 8, 2007
Genes From The Father Facilitate The Formation Of New Species:
The two closely related bird species, the collared flycatcher and the pied flycatcher, can reproduce with each other, but the females are more strongly attracted to a male of their own species. This has been shown by an international research team directed by Anna Qvarnström at Uppsala University and published in Science. They demonstrate that the gene for this sexual preference is found on the sex chromosome that is inherited from the father and that only females have a copy of. The discovery sheds new light on how new species…
oracknows | October 5, 2007Over the last 15 months that this regular Friday feature has been in existence, I've come across some real doozies in the world of woo. Who could forget, for example, quantum gyroscopic theories of homeopathy? Or the DNA activation guy? Or the "no plane" conspiracy theory of 9/11? Or a certain disgusting "feedback loop" for curing cancer? A few others stand out from the pack, like Healing Sounds and Dr. Emoto, as rare examples of just the right amount of superficial plausibility married to over-the-top craziness to be memorable.
This week's installment might just be one of these. It is truly…
grrlscientist | October 4, 2007tags: researchblogging.org, Brown paper wasp, Polistes fuscatus, hymenoptera, evolution, eusociality, social behavior
Brown paper wasp , Polistes fuscatus.
Fairport, New York, USA. 2003.
Many thanks to Alex Wild for sharing his amazing images here.
Thanks to Elizabeth Tibbetts for the species identification.
[larger view]
Eusociality, or "true social behavior", is the most extreme form of cooperative sociality known. Due to its seemingly altruistic nature, eusociality has provided many interesting challenges for evolutionary theory. Eusociality, as exemplified by ants, bees and wasps, is…
revere | October 4, 2007You're in a crowded bar near the airport and your co-worker is trying to tell you something important. She wants you to do something before you drive her car to the garage for her. She is heading out of town. But you can't hear her over the din from the crowd. It's too noisy, too much cross talk. Later you discover she was telling you the gas gauge is broken and the tank almost empty. But you know that. After you ran out of gas on the freeway. Now imagine you are a developing fetus. Genes in your nervous system are turning on and off in a precise sequence in response to what's going on in…
retrospectacle | October 4, 2007As I mentioned earlier in the week, I'm trying to raise money for a classroom-in-need to buy some books about neuroscience, using the case of Phineas Gage as a jumping off point. (And if you haven't yet donated, they would be most grateful for even a dollar!) I thought it would be interesting and appropriate to discuss what happened to Mr. Gage and how it impacted neuroscience. It all began when a large piece of metal exploded through his brain.
Phineas Gage was the ultimate average joe--a railway foreman who was laying down track outside Cavendish, Vermont in the fall of 1848. It was on the…
retrospectacle | October 2, 2007What happens when you take the "science" out of "neuroscience"? Well, you get something quite akin to Dr. Mario Beauregard's theories on spirituality and the brain. Dr. Beauregard and his graduate student Vincent Paquette are studying the spiritual experiences of Carmelite nuns.
First, we had to convince the nuns that we were not trying to prove that their religious experiences did not actually occur, that they were delusions, or that a brain glitch explained them. Then we had to quiet both the hopes of professional atheists and the fears of clergy about the possibility that we were trying to…
grrlscientist | October 1, 2007tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter
Back from the brink:
The endangered Rimatara lorikeet or Kuhl's lory, Vini kuhlii,
has been successfully reintroduced to Ätiu.
Image: Phil Bender.
Birds in Science
Migrating birds, it seems, can "see" the Earth's magnetic field which they use as a compass to guide them around the globe. Specialized neurons in the eye, sensitive to magnetic direction, have been shown for the first time to connect via a specific brain pathway to an area in the forebrain of birds responsible for vision, German researchers said on…
tsmith | September 29, 2007In another case of TV shows being prescient, abuzz here at other Scienceblogs is this story, which sounds like a bad B movie: " 6 die from brain-eating amoeba in lakes." The amoeba in question is a species of naegleria, which was featured on the medical drama House last year. According to the article:
Beach said people become infected when they wade through shallow water and stir up the bottom. If someone allows water to shoot up the nose -- say, by doing a somersault in chest-deep water -- the amoeba can latch onto the olfactory nerve.
The amoeba destroys tissue as it makes its way up…